War, trauma and torture: For sex-trafficked Syrians in Lebanon there is no peace

Beirut: The iron-gated doors and blacked-out windows keep the room dark at all hours of the day. Lingerie is splayed across the floor and a whip hangs over the bed.

This nightmarish setting north of the Lebanese capital is where Soha, a 26-year-old Syrian woman, was trapped for eight years with dozens of other Syrian victims of sex trafficking.

In an interview with AFP in southern Lebanon, Soha — a pseudonym for the soft-spoken brunette with black-polished nails — recounts her traumatic experience.

"We had to sleep with 15 to 20 men every day, sometimes 40 if we had a lot of 'work'," she says, taking deep breaths to steady her shaking voice.

"We weren't allowed to leave. The guards would bring us clothes, makeup and food."

Four months ago, Soha managed to escape from her captors and tried to get legal help.

Then in early April, security forces stormed the building where they were being held, breaking up the largest known sex trafficking ring in recent years.

At least 75 women — mostly Syrian — were freed.

More and more Syrians made vulnerable by war are becoming victims of sexual exploitation, including in Lebanon and Jordan, police and international organisations say.

People in Lebanon were shocked by the women's horrifying ordeal, as well as by accusations that the "moral police" were complicit and that a gynaecologist had carried out at least 200 abortions on the trapped women.

Notorious gang leader

Originally from southern Syria, Soha was tricked into coming to Lebanon in 2008.

She was told she would be working as a waitress, but was terrified to find she had been "sold" to the head of a powerful sex trafficking ring.

"When I refused to be a sex worker, he beat me," she says.

The gang leader who had imprisoned Soha and so many other women was a former officer in Syria's notorious air force intelligence service.

A Syrian sex trafficking victim sits in her safehouse. AFP

Security sources say the man — identified only by the initials IR — fled to Syria after his operation was broken up.

For years, he had managed Chez Maurice and Silver, two of the most infamous brothels in Maameltein, a town known as Lebanon's red light district.

Prostitution is illegal in Lebanon, and police shuttered both locations earlier this month.

Wringing her hands and chain-smoking cigarettes, Soha says she and other women were tortured at Chez Maurice.

"They could do anything to us. If we refused anal or oral sex, or sex without a condom, or if a client wasn't satisfied, they would whip us until the morning," she says.

I.R. would tie the girls to tables, throw cold water on them and hit them with whips or plastic piping -- often in front of other women to serve as a warning.

One girl was so badly beaten that she was bedridden for a month, Soha says.

"The only time a girl was allowed to leave was when IR would bring her to his house for the night to 'test' her as if she was merchandise," she says.

"During those eight years, I felt filthy, like trash... I couldn't feel my body. It belonged to my torturers, my clients."

Tricked and trafficked

Since the war in neighbouring Syria broke out in 2011, increasing numbers of women fleeing the conflict have been trafficked in Lebanon.